Campus Carry: Armed and ready for college

Grassroots effort aims for open carry on campus

Wade Millward and Carmen Forman / News21

1:16 PM, Aug 26, 2014

Derek Sommer, 23, an Idaho State University student, used to leave his gun locked in his car when he went to class. A new law allows him to carry his handgun concealed while he is on campus. Carmen Forman/News21.

Carmen Forman/News21.

The national News21 Initiative brings together a select group of student journalists to produce a major national investigation into a topic of wide interest. This year, News21 has documented the struggle over gun rights and regulations in America. Under the direction of some of the nations best professional investigative journalists, 29 students from 16 universities have traveled the country to produce text, videos and interactive graphics to tell the story “Gun Wars: The Struggle Over Rights and Regulation in America.” Over the next two weeks we will be featuring much of their reporting. You can view the entire project at the News21 website.

POCATELLO, Idaho — Derek Sommer carries a concealed handgun almost everywhere he goes these days, including onto the campus of Idaho State University — an illegal act until recently.

Under an Idaho law that took effect July 1, nearly 3,000 Idaho residents with enhanced concealed carry permits — people like Sommer — can bring their guns on college campuses. Sommer no longer leaves his gun at home or in his car's locked glove compartment.

Idaho became the seventh state to allow "campus carry" in a movement gaining traction across the country, despite the often strenuous opposition of other students, faculty and campus administrators.

Spurred by recent high-profile campus shootings, grassroots groups like Students for Concealed Carry (SCC) are pushing for the right to carry weapons on campus, sometimes with the backing of larger gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association.

For Sommer, 23, a computerized machining major who founded Idaho State’s SCC chapter, carrying his handgun means protection for himself, his wife McKinley, and their 7-month-old daughter, Andi.

“It makes me angry; it really does,” he said. “I don’t like the fact that there are places where it’s considered OK to tell somebody, ‘You don’t have the right to protect yourself.’”

For others, like Boise State University student Angel Hernandez, the new law means less focus on learning and more on worrying about who's packing a gun on campus.

“I went to Boise State to get an education; I didn’t go to Boise to go to a gun show,” he said.

Opponents of campus carry laws have seen mixed success of late. Arkansans Against Guns on Campus got state lawmakers to exclude students from a law letting faculty and staff bring concealed guns on campus if their college grants permission. Attempts to start a Colorado referendum to end campus carry there ended in failure.

Groups like SCC, meanwhile, have active chapters in at least 30 states, mobilizing as many as 30,000 students and faculty to support laws and court cases favorable to the cause, said group spokesman Kurt Mueller.

Victory in the West, Battles in the South

A News21 analysis of on-campus shootings found 87 of them, or 60 percent, have happened in the past decade. Campus carry supporters nationwide said in interviews that the increase in shootings partly influenced their desire to ping concealed guns on campus.

SCC formed after the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Mueller argues an armed student could’ve stopped the shooter without waiting for police to arrive.

“The confrontation would have ended a lot sooner,” he said. “Lives would have been saved.”

Campus carry supporters point to the legal doctrine of preemption, which says only the state legislature can regulate guns in the state. No other government in the state, such as cities and counties, can make gun rules. Many states exempt K-12 schools and some public buildings from concealed carry of guns.

Oregon, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Mississippi and Wisconsin — and now Idaho — have laws on the books that allow students to conceal weapons on campus.

In Utah, students may ask not to live with gun owners in dorms, and universities can ban guns from certain meeting rooms.

Kansas' 2013 campus carry law included an optional four-year delay before licensees could ping concealed guns on campus. Arkansas’ law allowing only faculty and staff to carry requires colleges annually renew any on-campus bans.

Colorado colleges still regulate guns in dorms, dining halls and event centers. University of Colorado, Boulder, designated dorm space for gun owners, but no students have requested it, said campus spokesman ponson Hilliard. In Colorado, concealed carry licensees must be at least 21.

SCC’s focus next year is Texas, Mueller said. As of September, students could store guns in cars on campus. The group plans to have members write and call state lawmakers to demand more places on campus that allow concealed guns.

Marion P. Hammer calls opposition to campus carry “nothing more than an attempt to make gun-free zones, where murderers come on campus and kill kids."

Hammer, a former NRA president and the organization's longtime lobbyist in Florida, said that NRA will use the state’s preemption law to push state legislators to authorize concealed carry on campuses.

“Students can't (carry) right now, but we’re going to fix that," said Hammer, one of 76 NRA board members.

The NRA led the campus carry effort in Idaho, where the NRA state lobbyist was a regular at bill hearings. Though the NRA has been a major player in Idaho and Florida, it usually takes a supporting role on campus carry, NRA board member and former lobbyist Todd Rathner said.

SCC and a grassroots group called Ohioans for Concealed Carry cited Ohio's pre-emption law in a July lawsuit against Ohio State University that seeks to allow campus carry there. The trial is expected to start next year.

SCC has also threatened to sue Georgia after a letter from the state attorney general’s office declared campus carry still illegal, SCC Southeast Director Robert Eagar said.

The groups say campus carry is allowed by Georgia’s Safe Carry Protection Act, which critics have called “guns everywhere.” The law, which took effect July 1, allows permit holders to ping concealed guns into K-12 schools, bars, churches and more.

Colleges fight back

For Hernandez, the Boise State student, campus is no place for guns.

“School should be a place where you learn, where you make something better with your life," said the 24-year-old Hernandez, who wants to teach civics when he graduates in two years. "It shouldn’t be a place where you deal with the stress of a gun in the classroom.”

He is a member of the student government and joined other Idaho students to protest the campus carry law.

The students and other Idaho activists received guidance from Andy Pelosi, who challenges campus carry on a national level.

Pelosi, who is not related to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, started the anti-campus carry group GunFreeKids.org in 2008.

A series of campus carry bills following Virginia Tech and the 2008 Northern Illinois University shootings — in which 27-year-old former student Stephen Kazmierczak killed five people and wounded 18 others — caused Pelosi to focus on higher education.

His group focused on Idaho and Georgia this past legislative year, he said. Next year, he expects to help coordinate resistance to campus carry in Texas.

Colleges that side with Pelosi fear on-campus gun theft, threats with guns and accidental shootings, he said.

“We really believe that college campuses are safe environments, certainly safer than places off campus,” he said. “The educational environment is very different than people’s homes, and that’s not a place that guns should be carried.”

In Idaho, students and faculty who protested when Gov. C. L. “Butch” Otter signed campus carry into law, said lawmakers ignored them and listened instead to lobbyists and Idahoans who don’t work and live on campus.

Boise State student body President pyan Vlok said he faced an uphill battle fighting campus carry. Still determining what the law means for Idaho students, he joked about putting bulletproof vests in the student government budget.

Boise State University associate professor Ross Perkins

Ross Perkins, a Boise State associate professor in educational technology, criticized the campus carry movement in an opinion piece for a local newspaper.

He recalled witnessing the aftermath of the shooting at Virginia Tech, where he worked and studied for about nine years.

Perkins can picture the school’s grounds that day. He felt the heavy wind, heard the sirens and watched as responders rushed the first victims out of Norris Hall. He was 38 at the time.

About once a year, he said, he visits the Virginia Tech memorial at night, when it’s quiet. He walks the semicircle of Hokie Stones, rocks mined from Blacksburg quarries, reading the names of the 32 people murdered. He tells each person his or her life mattered.

“It’s also important for us never to forget, not just the names, but the individuals who are behind those names and understand who they could have been, who they were,” he said. “It’s something we all need to take account for every day, just to remind us that life is a precious thing, and for whatever reason it can go away.”

“I hope that it never happens again. But I said that in 2007, and how many incidences can we now count that have happened since then,” he said. “It’s stunning.”

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